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Jim Koontz and Ali Awad began a small, efficient company and have stayed small and efficient. “This allows us to be selective about whom we work for,” Awad says. “Remodeling is a lot more fun when you work for people you like.”
That’s a fitting sentiment for these design/build business owners who first met through their wives and who walked their dogs together as they talked houses and design in their southwest Minneapolis neighborhood. Now 80% of their work is in that same neighborhood.
The B.L.E.N.D. Award encourages and rewards builders, architects, and home owners to blend newly remodeled or constructed homes and businesses into the fabric of Minneapolis neighborhoods. A jury of industry professionals and neighborhood residents will select projects for recognition.
B.L.E.N.D. jurors gave this project perhaps the most effusive praise of any of the award winners, noting that it is “the hands down winner.”
“They took a run of the mill home and gave it an edge… It looks like it always has been and always will be a part of the neighborhood,” they wrote.
A hit during a high school hockey game late last year sent Jack Jablonski into the boards. In that instant, Jablonski’s spinal cord was damaged and he slid to the ice, paralyzed.
His life was forever changed, as were the lives of his parents and friends, his coaches and teammates, the young player who hit him. Communities hosted fund-raisers. Hockey parents demanded the sport be made safer.
Jack Jablonski is known as Jabby or Jabs to his friends. He is a gifted young varsity hockey player at Benilde St. Margarets high school (St. Louis Park, Minnesota). He is also a varsity tennis player and has played baseball his whole life. His favorite hockey player is Pavol Datsyuk of the Detroit Red Wings, #13. He was a 50 goal/110 point scoring forward on the 2011 Minnesota Bantam A state tournament Minneapolis/Park Storm. He is a big brother to Max and a son to Mike and Leslie. He is a friend to many.
And he is an inspiration to a whole community.
For the second consecutive year, Awad+Koontz has been neamed to Remodeling magazine's list of the largest home improvement companies in the nation.
Full-service remodeling companies can respond to any kind of renovation need that a homeowner may have. Some, like The Remodeling Co., in Berkley, Mass., build from architects’ plans, others design their work in-house.
